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Recent advances in aDNA and isotope analysis have revealed unparalleled insights into issues of mobility and population change in European prehistory. Until recently, however, the main impact of this work has been in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, where major demographic transformations have been identified, for example with the arrival of agriculture and later migrations from the Eurasian steppe. There have also been concerns that aDNA studies have sometimes employed outdated culture-historical frameworks that obscure some of the subtleties of more recent archaeological analysis, for example conflating archaeological cultures with biological populations. Clearly, if we hope to grasp the dynamism, subtlety and complexity of the human past, we must attempt to integrate these powerful new scientific techniques with cultural archaeological analyses, drawing on approaches from the humanities.
COMMIOS (Communities and Connectivities: Iron Age Britons and their Continental Neighbours) is a five year project, funded by the European Research Council, examining the population dynamics of Late Bronze and Iron Age communities in Britain and the Near Continent. The project employs large-scale aDNA and isotope analyses alongside osteoarchaeology and the contextual study of mortuary practices. At the broad scale, our aDNA work aims to reveal the genetic diversity of Bronze and Iron Age populations in Britain and their relationships with communities in continental Europe. Alongside multi-isotope analysis, this can provide insights into mobility patterns and inter-regional contacts. At a more local scale, the integration of these techniques with osteoarchaeology and funerary archaeology allows us to examine questions concerning kinship, gender and inequality within and between later prehistoric communities.
This paper presents the preliminary results of the project, including evidence for significant population movement into southern Britain during the last few centuries of the second millennium BC. Rather than a single, uni-directional influx of people from the Continent to southern Britain, however, this population change is the outcome of processes extending over several centuries and can be linked to wider movements across Central and Western Europe at this time.
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